Availability: Nuance As A Service

Something that has struck me funny recently surrounds the traditional notion of availability of web applications. With respect to its relationship to revenue, to infrastructure and application behavior, and fault protection and tolerance, I’m thinking it may be time to get a broaderĀ upgrade adjustment to the industry’s perception on the topic. These nuances in the...
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On Being A Senior Engineer

UPDATE: I’ve added a short section on the topic of sponsorship. I think that there’s a lot of institutional knowledge in our field, especially about what makes for a productive engineer. But while there are a good deal of books in the management field about “expert” roles and responsibilities of non-technical individual contributors, I don’t...
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Systems Engineering: A great definition.

Ben Rockwood said something last December about the re-emergence of the Systems Engineer and I agree with him, 100%. To add to that, I’d like to quote the excellent NASA Systems Engineering handbook’s introduction. The emphasis is mine: Systems engineering is a methodical, disciplined approach for the design, realization, technical management, operations, and retirement of...
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The epicenter of the web, and NYC

One of my apprehensions in moving to New York from San Francisco was a common concern: why would I move from the ‘epicenter’ of the web to a place where it’s not? There’s been lots written about startup hub cities, and innovative web metro areas, but the fact of the matter is that New York...
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How Complex Systems Fail: A WebOps Perspective

I guess I’m late on getting to this, but How Complex Systems Fail by Richard Cook is excellent. Let me start with this: I don’t think I can overstate how right-on this paper is, with respect to the challenges, solutions, observations, and concerns involved with operating a medium to large web infrastructure. I found this...
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